Fmapkmn — Ladies and gentlemen, TF2 Connexion, the French TF2 community, would like to present the second edition of our TF2 Connexion Movie Contest powered by ROCCAT, our German Sponsor.

Last year entries from AMS, Saladeauthon & .Cali and Grid were the three chosen from a total of 23 participants.
This year, the TF2C Movie Contest is open for everyone (not only for European moviemakers as last year), aimed at all TF2 communities.

When does the contest begin ?
Beginning date: Now!
Deadline: Thursday 30th September 2014 on 23:59 CEST (UTC+2).
The results will be announced in October.

What are the competition’s rules regarding content ?
The TF2 Connexion Movie Contest powered by ROCCAT is a TF2-related video contest.
One does not necessarily have to make a fragmovie. It could be a simple fragshow or a jumping movie, however, we do not accept SFM-exclusive movies, although you can still use SFM in your video.
There is a length limit : Under 10 minutes.

How do I make my video eligible for this contest ?
You must use the TF2C/ ROCCAT intro at the beginning of your video.

You can edit the intro (music, background) but you need to keep the animation and the visibility of these two logos.
The title of your video on Youtube must include the mention “#TF2Connexion Contest”.
The video submission needs to be in the TF2C thread (french), ETF2L thread (european and others) or TFTV thread (american).

Can I do multiple entries ?
You have only one entry for this contest. However, two or more moviemakers can work in one entry.

How will judges evaluate the entries ?
Each of our 7 judges will attempt to grade the movie according to: editing, frag quality, and personal impressions.
Finally, an average mark will be generated for each movie in order to rank them.

Why is there a category for best Frenchman in this contest?
ROCCAT, the german manufacturer of gaming peripherals, is powering this contest instead of on our side. Actually, our partner is focused on the French TF2 community and especially the French league. After discussion with our sponsor, ROCCAT agreed to help us in this international project and this justifies the French place.

What countries are eligible to win ROCCAT gear ?
For this edition, the only countries eligible to win gear from ROCCAT are the following:
– France
– Belgium
– United-Kingdom
– Germany
– Spain
– Italy
– Switzerland
– Austria
If a winner resides outside of these countries, he/ she is not eligible to receive gear from ROCCAT due to the high cost of shipping.
Cash prizes can be won by anyone regardless of your country. Half from the community and the other half from an anonymous donor (who has decided the split of the cashprize especially for the first place). Thus, we will try to renegotiate the intial cash prize. Where currency conversion is an issue, we can renegotiate the cash prize into an equivalent; either games and/or tf2 items.

If a French movie maker takes the first or second place, what happens to the French dedicated place ?
In that case, the highest Frenchman prize will be awarded to the third ranked entry.

Hildreth — As the Summer i-series approaches, European hopes will be laid on the mighty shoulders of Epsilon once more as they attempt to retain their World Champion status versus the might of North America and Australia’s Team Immunity. Epsilon managed to see off Awsomniac on Thursday night in a two map win, they retained their ETF2L crown for the 6th season running. The history books will say it was business as usual for European TF2, the formidable giants of the scene dominated and won – AGAIN. But when you take a closer look at how the past few months have gone for Epsilon, it was their worst season in years.

Hildreth – In 4 weeks and 3 days time, on Friday the 22nd August in the Ricoh Arena, Coventry, England the eyes of the TF2 world will be focused on the Insomnia 52 LAN event, the UK’s biggest gaming festival and by extension, TF2’s most coveted prize. The days of top European sides in attendance with multitudes of community teams from UK and mainland Europe are still here, but thanks to some hard work and generous donations for the third summer running, we will have not one, not two but THREE teams from different continents attending this event. North American pride is hurt after Epsilon’s victory last year at i49, so ESEA LAN winners Froyotech and i46 champions Classic Mixup have been sponsored by a HUGE community fundraiser raising over $14,000 to fly in these superstars to compete with the likes of Epsilon and Awsomniac (EU’s top 2 sides). And to add punch into the fruit bowl, it wouldn’t be a true “World Championship” without the attendance of the Australians, Team Immunity who surprised many including myself, finishing 4th in a tournament where they had beaten the 3rd and 2nd placed sides.

All in all this promises to be a truly memorable event and to celebrate the fact we have 1 month leading up, I will be a running a rather long winded, social media campaign, using the hashtag #i52tf2 to raise hype by releasing a series of articles leading up to the event. Not all will be directly related to i52, but they will all be TF2 related and hopefully an interesting read.

Gentleman Jon — In what will be the last article of this kind because TF2 is now dead I’m taking a quick look at the immediate impact of the new sticky damage ramp up effect on the EU TF2 rules set. It’s only been a few days but there are some trends appearing on the pickup site logs. The data runs from the 18th to today (20th) from the tf2pickup site logs. This makes a good representation of the great unwashed proletariat TF2 competitive scene that applies to the most players, as opposed to the Olympian heights of the Premiership mix.

SuddenlyStarMia — In what was originally meant to be an article promoting the Highlander Season 6 Awards Show on Sunday, it became evident, unfortunately, when I broke 3000 words that it was unsuitable as a general news post and was destined to be its own singular entity. Fortunately however, it has allowed me more time to write an article which managed to outdo the infamously long post-i49 article I wrote. Before Highlander-lovers inadvertently engage in an abundant serving copious enough to appease their appetites until the HL Nations Cup, for reference purposes, I wrote a marginally controversial article three months ago (which I would shamelessly implore you to read alongside an article that I was prohibited to publish on ETF2L regarding the start of the season, merely for the purposes of recap), regarding affairs in certain Premiership teams. In it was a graph visualising predictions for Season 6. I caught up with each of the team leaders about how their teams are faring post-season and their plans (if any) for Season 7.

Gentleman Jon —Just when the world needed a hero, newly crowned benevolent dictator Hildreth stepped forward to save us from a Highlander world dominated by tyrannical overlord in waiting (and compiler of maimed log files) Bulow. Before we begin this season’s statistical Highlander review let’s pause for a moment to reflect and collectively thank Hildreth for holding back the tide.

In this review I promise to do a better job of examining the Heavy class contribution, revealing which of the myriad new spies came closest to knocking Inso off his perch, and once again shit-talk all Pyros in comparison to Steve by default (apologies to other Pyros in advance).

After the Highlander auto-log detection debacle I can assure concerned readers each log included has been hand-picked with the utmost care. I’ve messed about with the rating player ordering I use as well, but this isn’t really the place to explain it.

So let’s dive into the infinite depths of the statistical vortex and discover why all your votes were wrong.